it’s what happens when you set impossibly high standards.
here’s how i was planning on finding out my lsat scores: at home tonight, with seastreet cooking dinner and a bottle of wine to either celebrate or commiserate with.
here’s how i actually found out my lsat score: rudely interrupted while writing an email, my outlook program automatically opened the email, bursting onto the quiet morning landscape with it’s brevity and impersonal jab of a mediocre score. a mediocre score. a percentile in the seventies. the requisite 1, followed by two other numbers that felt like two tiny times new roman stab wounds. mediocre.
i’m not going to tell you my score, really, because different scores have different meanings for different people. suffice it to say that i did alright by some, and not enough for me. not enough for where i want to go to school. desperately want to go to school. 10 points shy of the impossibly high standard i set for myself. feeling like i let everyone down who was convinced i would do well, who told me over beers and over the telephone and on IM that i would ace it. so much faith, and the result, three mediocre little numbers! followed by realizing how ridiculous that sentiment is. followed by realizing the person i most let down was myself – my blind half-full faith that lulls me into carelessly believing i always get what i want. seeing those three letters on my harsh computer screen, feeling ready to burst into tears at what i foolishly have interpreted as my own failing. it’s just a test, all my superfriends say, all my heroes. you’ll do better in october, you’ll be much more prepared, we know you can do it because you rock. not believing them but glad they said it anyway. this is what i feel this morning.
so i’ll take my usual twenty four hours, kids. tonight, i will drink wine and i will be moody and fatalistic about it. i will try and take my mind off of what feels like stupid disaster, but it will be hard to fall asleep tonight. but my optimism has regenerative powers – and tomorrow i will dust off, shake away the negative energy, prop my chin up by force if need be…. and i’ll be fine.
just give me tonight to brood.

Advertisement